The Jurasits Y-DNA Project

...Where we stand:

Received Results

We have received 37 marker results for all five of the initial project participants, and supplemental results for an additional 30 markers on four of those five.  The five initial project participants are:

A)  Two persons from Bilicskini house who were known to be distantly related based on the available paper genealogy records.

B)  One person whose recent ancestors resided in a Jivicsini house (c.1850 onward), but whose deep ancestors (c.1800) once lived in a known Sincsevi house.

C)  One person from Istokovi house in the line of Alexander Jurasits (b. 1857) who lived, for a time, in a Jumestrovi house with his wife's family.

D)  One person from Istokovi house in the line of Kajetan Jurasits (b. 1853) who lived, for a time, in Istokovi #76 with his cousins,

We have also purchased and received a kit which is reserved for a member of Sincsevi house whose "paper trail" genealogy cannot yet be connected to the other known Sincsevi participant, but we have yet to formally establish contact with one of two possible candidates identified from this Sincsevi house line.  We hope to make contact shortly.

 

Findings / Conclusions

These five men represent the house names: Istokovi, Bilicskini, and Sincsevi. These houses gave rise to distinct Jurasits lineages which appear to be unrelated based on the paper-based church and civil records of Szentpeterfa.

The DNA results CLEARLY SHOW, however, that all five of the Jurasits men tested do descend from a common male ancestor who appears to have lived within the past 300-450 years.

This is a MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH as it unites the genealogy of all these separate Jurasits houses.

The indicated haplogroup for the Jurasits Y-DNA is known as "R1b1c" (an ancient European lineage with roots within Europe extending back up to 40,000 years ago, see below) with an additional strong match to the so-called "Western Atlantic Modal Haplotype" (WAMH).

The WAMH match indicates an area of ancestry in the past 2,000-5,000 years which might be loosely termed "Germanic", as most carriers of the WAMH can trace their deep ancestry back to areas of Europe associated in those times with Saxon and Anglo-Saxon tribes.

This was a mild surprise, as it was previously thought that the results might have shown a connection to Slavic peoples based on the known Croatian heritage of the Jurasits family.

Finally, we have identified an extremely rare marker value at location DYS456, at which our ancestors have a value of 19 or 20, while 99.9%+ of the population has a value between 14-18.  This is a potentially unique result, which will make it much easier to identify prospective relatives in Croatia and Europe as a whole.

 

The following is courtesy of the online encyclopedia "Wikipedia" concerning Haplogroup R1b1c:

R1b1c

Haplogroup R1b is an offshoot of Haplogroup R1 (M173), characterized by the M343 marker.

Present-day Europeans with M343 also have the markers P25 and M269. This defines the more precise subgroup R1b1c.

This subgroup is believed to have been widespread in Europe before the last Ice Age, and associated with the Aurignacian culture (32,000 - 21,000 BC) of the Cro-Magnon people, the first modern humans to enter Europe. The Cro-Magnons were the first documented human artists, making sophisticated cave paintings. Famous sites include Lascaux in France, Cueva de las Monedas in Spain and Valley of Foz Côa in Portugal (the biggest open air site in Europe).

The glaciation of the ice age intensified, and the continent became increasingly uninhabitable. The genetic diversity narrowed through founder effects and population bottlenecks, as the population became limited to a few coastal refugia in Southern Europe and Asia Minor. The present-day population of R1b in Western Europe are believed to be the descendents of a refugium in the Iberian peninsula, where the R1b1c haplogroup may have achieved genetic homogeneity. As conditions eased with the Allerød Oscillation in about 12,000 BC, descendents of this group migrated and eventually recolonised all of Western Europe, leading to the dominant position of R1b in variant degrees from Iberia to Scandinavia, so evident in haplogroup maps.

A second R1b1c population, reflected in a somewhat different distribution of haplotypes of the more rapidly varying Y-STR markers, appear to have survived alongside other haplogroups in Asia Minor, from where they spread out to repopulate Eastern Europe. However, they do not have the same dominance that R1b has in Western Europe. Instead the most common haplogroup in Eastern Europe is haplogroup R1a1, often thought to be associated with a subsequent migration of Indo-Europeans (or perhaps their ancestors) from the East.

(Note that in earlier literature the M269 marker, rather than M343, was used to define the R1b haplogroup. Then, for a time (from 2003 to 2005) what is now R1b1c was designated R1b3. This shows how nomenclature can evolve as new markers are discovered and then investigated).

Source: Wikipedia contributors, "Haplogroup R1b (Y-DNA)," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Haplogroup_R1b_%28Y-DNA%29&oldid=61192992 (accessed August 1, 2006).